Installation

ECL Twitter is on PyPi, so we recommend installing via pip:

$ pip install ecl-twitter

Configuration

If you’d like to use ECL Twitter for a stand alone application (e.g., in a script you’re writing to download your tweets), you’ll need to set the environment variables TWITTER_KEY, TWITTER_SECRET, and TWITTER_REDIRECT_URL with the values appropriate for your Twitter application.:

export TWITTER_KEY="Gmxb5Rh7gpOpzunQ7SQcOA"
export TWITTER_SECRET="irhZg1W5NO2r7M9IRwhjHKpzKPjJ3HXc6RYCbrM0"
export TWITTER_REDIRECT_URL="http://example.com/oauth/complete"

If you’re only interested in integration with Django, read django.

Authentication

We’ve made authentication very simple. Probably too simple, to be honest.:

>>> from ecl_twitter import Twitter
>>> twitter = Twitter()
>>> url, token, secret = twitter.generate_authorization()
>>> url
https://api.twitter.com/oauth/authorize?oauth_token=XXX

After opening this URL in your browser and allowing the application, you’ll be redirected to a page with a PIN. This is your verifier.:

>>> twitter = Twitter(token, secret)
>>> data = twitter.oauth.access_token(oauth_verifier=verifier)
>>> data
<Objectifier#dict oauth_token_secret=unicode user_id=unicode oauth_token=unicode screen_name=unicode>

Congratulations, you have successfully authenticated with Twitter (told you it was easy). data is an Objectifier object which should contain your token, secret, user id, and screen name.

To call the API, use your newly-acquired access token and access token secret:

>>> twitter = Twitter(data.oauth_token, data.oauth_token_secret)
>>> tweets = twitter.statuses.user_timeline()
>>> tweets
<Objectifier#list elements:20>

So, yeah. That’s it. Be fruitful and multiply.

Integrating with Django

What we did above is easy. For Django projects, we’ve made it even easier. In your views file:

from django.contrib.auth import authenticate, login
from django.http import HttpResponseRedirect

from ecl_twitter import twitter_begin, twitter_callback

from .models import User

# ...

@twitter_begin
def oauth_twitter_begin(request):
    pass

@twitter_callback
def oauth_twitter_complete(request, data):
    user, _ = User.objects.get_or_create(screen_name=data.screen_name, defaults={
        'access_token': data.oauth_token,
        'access_token_secret': data.oauth_token_secret })
    user = authenticate(id=user.id)
    login(request, user)
    return HttpResponseRedirect(reverse('home'))

Add these values to your settings.:

# The User model that you'll be using to authenticate with Twitter.
PRIMARY_USER_MODEL = "app.User"

AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS = (
    # ...
    'ecl_twitter.backends.TwitterAuthBackend',
)

TWITTER_KEY = "Gmxb5Rh7gpOpzunQ7SQcOA"
TWITTER_SECRET = "irhZg1W5NO2r7M9IRwhjHKpzKPjJ3HXc6RYCbrM0"
TWITTER_REDIRECT_URL = "http://example.com/oauth/complete"

Then map the above views in your urls.py:

# ...

urlpatterns = patterns('app.views',
    # ...
    url(r'^oauth/twitter/begin$', 'oauth_twitter_begin'),
    url(r'^oauth/twitter/complete$', 'oauth_twitter_complete'),
)

You’re done. Oh, you might also want to add some fields for storing the Twitter-related fields in your user model.

Contributing, feedback, and questions

• Github: https://github.com/elmcitylabs

• Bitbucket: http://bitbucket.com/elmcitylabs

• Email: opensource@elmcitylabs.com

• Twitter: @elmcitylabs